4 archi livret 29/08/07 12:47 Page 6 In the same vein as the Palettes series on painting and Contacts, on photography, the Architectures series is an example of ARTE s ambition to produce high-quality cultural programming aimed at the broadest possible audience, airing at prime time. Initiated by ARTE in 1995, the Architectures collection now includes over thirty films. Each short film concerns a single building in the classical, modern, or contemporary style and is thus a self-contained lesson in architecture, combining pleasure and intelligence with academic rigor. Co-produced from the beginning with Les Films d Ici, and endorsed and validated by France s most prominent cultural institutions, the series has become THE world reference for architecture documentaries. The release of this boxed set is the celebration of that fact. THIERRY GARREL, LUCIANO RIGOLINI Documentary Department, ARTE France Understanding our landscapes, our territory, the buildings that surround us, and those in which we lead our lives, along with their layout, hidden corners and corridors, is an infinitely rich way to relate History, the choices of authorities, social choices, and the conflicts, dreams and utopias of every one of us. Every wall tells an infinite number of stories, whether great or tiny, individual or collective, gay or tragic, banal or utopian. This is no metaphor. It s a line of enquiry, a way both to cherish and to analyse human adventures. RICHARD COPANS It is often said that architecture has a mysterious affinity with film, a kind of attraction that pre-destines the one art-form to the other. Yet in practice, filming architecture, far from being easy, is more like a difficult obstacle-course. First of all there is the question of scale. A building is large, while the camera is small. How are we to fit one inside the other? How are we to reconcile the Pharaonic pleasure, the monumental effect of architecture with the love for detail and the subtle effects of film? Then there is movement. At the end of the day, architecture needs to be static and balanced, whereas film actually feeds off disequilibrium and constant movement. And no tracking technique, however brilliantly executed, can alone solve this incoherency. As for space, even the simplest of places, whose layout can be instantly apprehended as one walks through them, become diabolically complicated and labyrinthine when one tries to portray them on the flat screen. Lastly there is the question of sense. Architecture is functional, while film is fictional. And yet it is always very tempting to believe that a building s Visitor Guide can serve as a scenario for a film, and that such a guided tour can provide a good thematic framework. But cinema is allergic to predictable journeys, and a film, in order to exist, must invent its own course through the building. In short, to film architecture is to engage in a permanent struggle to break up distances, to get away from weighty monumentality, to restore movement to the stones, and thus to rediscover, by the means of film, the real dramaturgy of the architectural project. STAN NEUMANN

7 archi livret 29/08/07 12:47 Page 12 de vue, est d'inverser la perspective et de ne pas considérer l'architecture comme une fin en soi, mais comme un cadre, un système de référence qui permet de regarder le monde. L'architecture comme lien social, mais aussi comme un miroir qui reflète et cristallise toutes les questions d'aujourd'hui. Au-delà de l'anecdote, cette lecture «politique», au sens très large du terme, est pour nous une des raisons d'être de ce travail. Elle parcourt d'une manière ou d'une autre tous les films. C'est la tension constante entre l'espace privé et l'espace public (la galerie Umberto de Naples, l'auditorium de Chicago, le Centre Pompidou, Phaeno). C'est l'utopie d'une architecture se croyant investie de la mission de sauver l'humanité (la saline d'arc et Senans, le Bauhaus), ou du moins de régler la question sociale (le familistère de Guise, Nemausus). Ce sont les relations complexes de l'architecture monumentale avec le pouvoir (lisibles dans presque tous les bâtiments d'envergure) ou celles, plus troubles, de la modernité avec les idéologies les plus nocives du XX e siècle (la Caisse d'epargne de Vienne d'otto Wagner, le Palais des Congrès de Rome de Libera). Mais c'est aussi, à l'opposé de la démesure monumentale, la recherche d'une architecture qui garde raison et reste à échelle humaine (la maison de Prouvé, le centre municipal de Säynätsalo, l'école de Porto de Siza). Aux spectateurs donc de se laisser aller au plaisir de ces rencontres en forme de courts-circuits et des interrogations qu'elles suscitent. Nous espérons qu'ils découvriront, comme nous l'avons découvert nous - mêmes, que les mêmes questions rebondissent de film en film et d'époque en époque, par-delà la singularité des bâtiments et de leurs architectes : la tension entre le vide et le plein, la structure et l'apparence, l'usage et la forme, la liberté et le pouvoir. Les parcours peuvent sembler aléatoires, et les films de la collection ressembler plus aux cailloux du Petit Poucet qu'à une vaste perspective bien balisée. Chacun de nos bâtiments n'est qu'un petit fragment d'une grande histoire. Mais chacun à sa manière parle de l'architecture toute entière. Stan Neumann, Richard Copans If the Architectures collection were a house, it would not be one of those sublime villas born perfectly-formed from an architect s mind, but rather one of those houses formed through use, built wherever one happened to be and subsequently extended, room by room, as need, means and desires dictated. But this does not mean that it was created without rules or a plan. Quite the contrary. The very first rule that we established for ourselves was not to start from a pre-defined framework of architectural history, as a sub-section of the History of Art, to be flushed out with pertinent examples, but on the contrary to start with the buildings themselves, chosen as much for their singularity as for their exemplarity. The second rule was to take an interest in the actual fabric of the buildings. Before being the milestone in any story, a building is first and foremost an assemblage of wood, stone, iron or concrete. A structure, materials, an object with its own function, heaviness and form. Thus Architectures is a collection of objects, of thing-lessons : not lessons about things, but the lessons that these things teach us. The third rule was to seek, through materials, structures, volumes and forms, the means to breathe life back into the architectural project s dramaturgy, or the meeting of the architect s wishes with the reality of the building. It is in this permanent tension between intention and its realisation that the most impressive constructions retain a certain fragility that makes them more accessible. The building is both the subject of and the setting for an enquiry into the moments of choice, decision, success or failure. In this investigative work, which is not concerned with the categories of beauty, sublimity or grandeur, the seemingly most trivial details are all clues that enable us to reconstruct what happened. Thus each building tells its own story, a petrified story, that we are trying to reawaken. Of course the buildings resist our rules and our efforts. They have their own logic, that we must be careful not to follow: it is always tempting to enter by the main door, but a film is not a visit. And yet at the same time we must also present the building in its simplest aspects, so that the viewer can understand it. How often, after weeks of editing, during which we have mulled over the most complex and subtle questions, has a first-time viewer said to us that s all

8 archi livret 29/08/07 12:47 Page 14 very interesting, but I don t really understand how you get in. If the collection were a house, it would initially have had two entrances. An old entrance: buildings from the second half of the 19th century, Jean- Baptiste-André Godin s Family Lodgings at Guise, Charles Garnier s Paris Opera, Luis Sullivan s Auditorium Building in Chicago, Felix Duban s Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris, the Galleria Umberto I in Naples constructions that foreshadow the 20th century s main architectural currents A contemporary entrance: Jean Nouvel s Nemausus, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano s Pompidou Centre, Santiago Calatrava s Lyon Satolas TGV station, Alvaro Siza s Porto Faculty of Architecture creations by living architects, at the cutting-edge of today s architectural invention. During its first years the collection functioned on this duality, which reflected not only the fields of expertise of our partners the Musée d Orsay and the Pompidou Centre but also our own tastes. Today the entrances have become numerous. The arrival of new partners the Direction de l architecture et du patrimoine, the Louvre Museum and the Cité de l Architecture et du Patrimoine has allowed us to open the collection up to other perspectives. We have been able to tackle the highlights of the 20th century: Le Corbusier s Convent at La Tourette, Aalvar Alto s Municipal Centre of Säynätsalo, Gropius Bauhaus, Wright s Johnson Building, Chareau s Maison de Verre, and Jean Prouvé s own house in Nancy. We have also been able to take a broader view, and look at older buildings: the Abbey Church in Conques, the Alhambra in Grenada, Palladio s Villa Barbaro at Maser, Ledoux s salt-works at Arc-et-Senans and to realise that despite the gulf that seems to separate them from us they also have a lot to say about architecture today. Some more ad hoc partnerships, such as the one with the Sasakawa Foundation (the Multimedia Library of Sendai, the Sugimoto Residence, and the Yoyogi Gym) have enabled other detours outside a strictly European framework. We mention all this not merely to salute our partners, but also to make the point that a collection such as this is also shaped by encounters, luck and circumstances. And that s a very good thing. During the first few years we were terrified at the idea of all the architectural masterpieces that we had not included, and could never hope to include. But at a certain point the collection reached its critical mass and the films began to communicate with each other. It was then that we realised that these gaps (for want of a better word) gave rise to a new phenomenon. Rather like the ellipses in a narrative, they unleashed new energies, opened up new perspectives and created new links that more systematic and exhaustive approaches cannot reveal. According to a classically linear and chronological approach, five long centuries of architecture separate Palladio s villa in Maser from Prouvé s house in Nancy. The collection, with its collage effects, dissolves this distance and enables us, in the most natural possible way, to look at one of these villas through the prism of the other, for example. By means of these correspondences, borrowings and contrasts, the collection s buildings are milestones along a host of journeys that each viewer can organise according to his or her fancy. One can choose thematic journeys across ages and cultures : for example, individual houses (Palladio s Villa di Maser, Sugimoto s house in Kyoto, Chareau s Maison de Verre, Prouvé s house in Nancy), the collective habitat (the Family Lodgings at Guise, Nouvel s Nemausus), workplaces (the salt-works at Arc-et-Senans, the Vienna Savings Bank, Wright s Johnson Building), religious edifices (the Abbey Church of Conques and the Convent of La Tourette), museums (Liebeskind s Jewish Museum in Berlin and Piano s and Rogers Pompidou Centre, O Gehry s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao), schools (Duban s Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Gropius Dessau Bauhaus, and Alvaro Siza s Porto Faculty of Architecture), and seats of power (Aalto s Municipal Centre of Säynätsalo and Libera s Reception and Congress Building in Rome). One can also follow a path made entirely of iron and glass (the Galleria Umberto I, the Maison de Verre, the Pompidou Centre) or even concrete (the Johnson Building, the Convent of La Tourette, Lyon Satolas station, Phaeno), or create other families of fabric or form, so as to follow from one film to another the debate between organic and rational architecture, or between the curve and the right-angle (Gaudi, Wright, Calatrava, O Gehry and Zaha Hadid on one side, Palladio, Ledoux, Garnier, Gropius and Prouvé on the other). One can even use architecture itself as a rallying point, where its mystics (like Ledoux, le Corbusier, Gropius or Zumthor) oppose its sceptics (like Prouvé, Piano or Liebeskind). But what is most interesting, from our point of view, is to turn the perspective

9 archi livret 29/08/07 12:47 Page 16 upside down and to consider architecture not as an end in itself, but as a frame, a system of reference that allows us to view the world. This is architecture as a social bond, but also as a mirror that reflects and distils all contemporary questions. Beyond its anecdotal aspect, this political reading, in the widest sense of the term, is in our eyes one of the reasons for this project s existence. It recurs in one way or another in all the films. It lies in the permanent tension between the private and the public space (the Galleria Umberto I in Naples, the Auditorium Building in Chicago, the Pompidou Centre, Phaeno). It resides also in the utopian ideal of an architecture that believes it has a mission to save humanity (the salt-works at Arcet-Senans, the Bauhaus) or at least to solve the social riddle (the Family Lodgings at Guise, Nemausus). It is also to be observed in the complicated relationship between monumental architecture and power (discernible in almost all large-scale buildings) or in the more troubled relationship between modernity and the 20th century s most harmful ideologies (Otto Wagner s Vienna Savings Bank, Libera s Reception and Congress Building in Rome). But it is also to be found far from this monumental excess, in the quest for an architecture that remains reasonable and keeps to a human scale (Prouvé s house, the Municipal Centre of Säynätsalo, the Siza s Porto Faculty of Architecture). Let the viewer then surrender to the pleasure of these short circuit encounters, and the questionings they provoke. We hope that he or she will find, as we ourselves have, that from film to film and from period to period, over and above the idiosyncrasies of the buildings and their architects, the same questions are thrown up: the tension between emptiness and fullness, structure and appearance, use and form, freedom and power. The journeys can seem random, and the films are linked more by a fine Ariadne s thread than by a huge and well signposted path. And each one of our buildings is merely a tiny fragment of a great story. But each one speaks in its own way about architecture as a whole. Stan Neumann, Richard Copans TIMELINE OF THE BUILDINGS IN THE ARCHITECTURES COLLECTION ALONGSIDE MAJOR CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE SAME ERA

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